Ezra Abbot

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Ezra Abbot

Ezra Abbot (April 28, 1819, Jackson, Maine - March 21, 1884, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American biblical scholar.^[1] Abbot was a Christ-denying Unitarian who worked on the ASV (American Standard Version). He did not believe that Jesus Christ was God or was the creator.

Life and writings

He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840. In 1847, at the request of Prof. Andrews Norton, he went to Cambridge, where he was principal of a public school until 1856. He was assistant librarian of Harvard University from 1856 to 1872, and planned and perfected an alphabetical card catalog, combining many of the advantages of the ordinary dictionary catalogs with the grouping of the minor topics under more general heads, which is characteristic of a systematic catalogue. From 1872 until his death he was Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Harvard Divinity School.

Abbot's studies were chiefly in Oriental languages and textual criticism of the New Testament, though his work as a bibliographer showed such results as the exhaustive list of writings (5300 in all) on the doctrine of the future life, appended to W. R. Alger's History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, as it has prevailed in all Nations and Ages (1862), and published separately in 1864.

Abbot's publications, though always of the most thorough and scholarly character, were to a large extent dispersed in the pages of reviews, dictionaries, concordances, texts edited by others, Unitarian controversial treatises, etc. However, he took a more conspicuous and personal part in the preparation (with Baptist scholar Horatio B. Hackett) of the enlarged American edition of Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1867-1870), to which he contributed more than 400 articles, as well as greatly improving the bibliographical completeness of the work. He was an member of the American revision committee for the Revised Version (1881-1885), and helped prepare Caspar René Gregory's Prolegomena to the revised Greek New Testament of Constantin von Tischendorf.

He was one of the 32 founding members of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1880.^[2]

His principal single work, representing his scholarly method and conservative conclusions, was The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences (1880; 2nd ed. by J. H. Thayer, with other essays, 1889), originally a lecture. In spite of the compression due to its form, this work was up to that time probably the ablest defense, based on external evidence, of the Johannine authorship, and certainly the most complete treatment of the relation of Justin Martyr to this gospel.

Abbot Appears on the front cover of David Cloud's book, Unholy Hands on God's Holy Book.

Matthew Riddle was one of the most influential members of the ASV committee said of Abbot:

“Dr. Abbot was the foremost textual critic in America, and his opinions usually prevailed when questions of text were debated” (Matthew Riddle, The Story of the Revised New Testament, 1908, p. 30).

The following excerpt from a memorial resolution issued by the committee gives additional evidence of the Unitarian’s influence on the Revision on both sides of the ocean:

“Always one of the first in his place at the table, and one of the last to quit it, he [Ezra Abbot] brought with him thither the results of careful preparation. His suggestions were seldom the promptings of the moment. Hence they always commanded consideration; often secured instant adoption. ... But it was in questions affecting the Greek text that Dr. Abbot’s exceptional gifts and attainments were pre-eminently helpful. Several of his essays on debated passages, appended to the printed reports of our proceedings which were forwarded from time to time to the brethren in England, are among the most thorough discussions of the sort which are extant, won immediate respect for American scholarship in this department, and HAD NO SMALL INFLUENCE IN DETERMINING THAT FORM OF THE SACRED TEXT WHICH WILL ULTIMATELY, WE BELIEVE, FIND ACCEPTANCE WITH ALL CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS” (Historical Account of the Work of the American Committee of Revision, 1885, p. 68).

ASV Footnotes

He authored the footnotes in the ASV that say that Christ should not be worshipped and that question his deity. For example, at John 9:38, the corrupt footnote states,

“The Greek word denotes an act of reverence, whether paid to a creature (as here) or to the Creator.” (1901 ASV marginal note)

Abbot also argued that the last clause of Romans 9:5 was a doxology to God and does not refer to Christ.

In Acts 20:28 Abbot led the committee to remove “God” and replace it with “the Lord,” thus corrupting this powerful witness to the deity of Jesus Christ. Unitarians and theological modernists alleged that Jesus is “the Lord” but not actually God.

Abbot also wrote a long article arguing for the omission of “God” in 1 Timothy 3:16.

Honors

Abbot was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1861.^[3] Though a layman, he received the degree of S.T.D. from Harvard in 1872, and that of D.D. from Edinburgh in 1884.

Works

• On the comparative antiquity of the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts of the Greek Bible .. (1872)
• A critical Greek and English concordance of the New Testament (1872) revised by Ezra Abbot
• The authorship of the Fourth Gospel: external evidences (1880)
• Ezra Abbot & J. Rendel Harris, Notes on Scriveners' "Plain introduction to the criticism of the New Testament," 3rd edition [microform] (1885)
• The authorship of the Fourth gospel & other critical essays, selected from the published papers of the late Ezra Abbot (1888)

References

• 1. Chambers Biographical Dictionary, ISBN 0-550-18022-2, page 2
• 2. Saunders, Ernest W. (1982). "Searching the Scriptures:A History of the Society of Biblical Literature".
• 3. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 18 March 2011.

Attribution Endnote

• See S. J. Barrows, Ezra Abbot (Cambridge, Mass., 1884).

External links

• Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889
• Abbot, Ezra in the Christian Cyclopedia
• The historical records of Ezra Abbot are in the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.